School-Museum Residencies - the Future of Museum Learning

Museums Association Future of Museums: Learning and Engagement Conference

National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh, March 219

Is it possible to predict the future of museum learning? I’m not sure, but I would like to see My Primary School is at the Museum (MPSM) residencies as part of it. I'm Katie Potter and with Heritage Insider, I’ve been developing a MPSM Toolkit of resources to support teachers and museum professionals to make residencies happen.

Schools and Museums working together

I’m going to share case studies and themes from the recent Future of Museums: Learning and Engagement conference that I think are most relevant to museums and schools working together. And I’m also going to suggest how benefits of MPSM residencies link to conference ideas about the future of museum learning.

The conference also explored brilliant examples of embedding museum learning in NHS services, online and with community groups and adult learners. This post will focus on school examples, but a point made at the conference - backed up by MPSM pilot evaluation - is that a school child does not exist in isolation. The child, their carers and their school are community. And ideally the museum will be an active part of that community and place too.

School children and poverty

4 million children live in poverty in the UK. Gordon Rintoul, Director of the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh - where the conference took place- highlighted the duality of the city . Despite the affluence and success of Edinburgh’s economy, the city has a level of poverty higher than the national average and higher than most other local authorities in Scotland. What this means is that many people living in poverty in the city may experience multiple disadvantages; through an interaction of factors such as unemployment, low income, poor housing, poor health and barriers to lifelong learning, culture, sport and recreation. [1]

Museums should deliver social justice

Against this background, a strong theme running through the conference was social justice. What, in a deeply unequal and divided society, can museums do to redress this balance? David Anderson, Director General, Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museums Wales, set a reflective yet ambitious tone,

“Museums should deliver social justice through cultural democracy.”

Echoed in the Arts Council’s, ‘Great Art and Culture For Everyone’ goals:

“Every child and young person has the opportunity to experience the richness of the arts, museums and libraries.” [2]

Museum Consultant, Mark O’Neill, added: “We can’t defeat capitalism. But we can think about who is not coming and how can we make them welcome?” Perhaps if the MPSM model is to have the most impact, it should begin in communities where deprivation and barriers to culture and lifelong learning are highest.

Schools are cultural levers

Colleen Watters, Head of Learning and Partnerships at Ulster Museum, was a member of the Where are we now, and how are we working with communities around the UK? panel. She highlighted that the widest social demographic of people can be reached by museums working with schools. Schools can act as cultural levers, giving children the opportunity to experience visiting a museum and exploring its collections.

Colleen was passionate that, “schools are community,” and also about the power of museums as spaces to bring people together. She shared the impact of the museum’s ‘Imagine Still Life’ project with Corpus Christi college in West Belfast. Students gained confidence working with artists to develop their drawing, collage and sculpture skills, inspired by William Scott’s paintings. http://www.irishnews.com/news/2014/02/12/news/students-art-to-hang-among-great-masters-83453/

Make all schools confident museum visitors

Stephen Allen, Head of Learning and Programmes, National Museum of Scotland, spoke about the need to upskill all schools and make them all confident in visiting. The challenges are to find ways of funding transport costs and to make it accessible for every child in every school. He also talked about how the summer residency in the museum led by ‘Impact Arts’ had helped young people to feel at home in the museum.

https://www.nms.ac.uk/about-us/outreach-and-engagement/past-projects/impact-arts-gallery-37

Heritage Schools

Dominique Bouchard, Head of Learning and Interpretation, English Heritage, highlighted the real-world learning that happened in the ‘Heritage Schools’ programme. The programme connected schools - teachers, children, parents and community - with their local heritage. One ‘Heritage Schools’ project involved organising an open top bus tour of the local housing estate, giving parents and children a tour of their own area. The tour gave a feeling of importance to places people walk past every day. It helped to promote people’s pride in where they live.

There is a wealth of inspiring case studies from the Heritage Schools programme here:

https://historicengland.org.uk/services-skills/education/heritage-schools/teacher-survey/

I was reminded of the Arbeia Roman Fort MPSM pilot. It was well into the second week before the children truly understood that the Roman fort on their doorstep was actually real. The MPSM model involves schools and museums working in partnership and can help communities come together and develop a sense of place.

The power of place-based learning

The next panel discussion was New Models of Practice – What lessons can museums learn from organisations doing effective work inside and outside the sector? Kate Fellows, Lifelong Learning Manager, Leeds Museums and Galleries, wanted every child in Leeds to have the cultural entitlement that her son enjoyed. She described her son’s delight in exploring objects; how he had become accustomed to having Anglo Saxon and Victorian objects at home when workshops had finished too late for Kate to get them back to the museum!

Kate shared how the Leeds Curriculum had been developed through conversations and cups of tea with people across Leeds, gathering stories about the city. She explained how the curriculum helps connect children to their local history stories and the places they live. The Leeds Curriculum can be found at www.mylearning.co.uk

In the meantime, I like how this extract from the website explains the power of grounding children in their city, through place-based learning, which a MPSM residency can do too.

“A place-based curriculum is about a place, for a place and by a place. It is designed to enhance the learning experiences of our children. There are a number of pieces of research (by the RSA, and individual cities) that indicate that grounding children in their city through place-based learning raises their attainment and encourages them to be active citizens. Matched with the engagement we know is possible through arts and culture, we want to put culture at the heart of our place based formal learning curriculum for Leeds.”

www.mylearning.co.uk

The power of object-based learning

Wendy Gallagher, Head of Learning and Engagement at Manchester Museum, reminded us to not take for granted the power of the object. She explained how the closure of the Museum’s Egyptian galleries had led the museum to create a ‘Pop up museum’. The excitement, awe and wonder of a museum visit could be recreated by an immersive visit to an inflatable one in a school hall. I’d like to visit one day! Find out more here:

https://learningmanchester.wordpress.com/the-inflatable-museum/

The future of learning and engagement

It was inspiring to hear David Anderson speak about the impact of the MPSM Swansea Waterfront Museum pilot on a boy who took part. The boy’s parents had been reluctant for him to go, worried that he would struggle with the unfamiliar environment of the museum. At the end of the two weeks residency, “they couldn’t believe the change in the boy. His confidence, his sharing, his social skills had all improved dramatically.”

Whilst discussing the potential benefit for children’s social and communication skills and wellbeing, David acknowledged the relatively small scale of the MPSM pilots. He recognised the need for huge investment in resources and time; the commitment and belief in the vison, that museums and schools would need to work together collaboratively to make MPSM happen.

Cultural Rights Model

The conference covered so many threads of current thinking about the future of learning. It touched on de-colonisation, the work of Museum Detox and Kicking the Dust and how the Cultural Rights model not a Welfare model should inform learning strategy. About people shaping not receiving culture. About co-creation and genuine, meaningful cultural experiences. I was reminded (again!) of the Arbeia Roman Fort MPSM pilot. The children shifted from participants (many of whom had never visited the site before the pilot) to creators of content when at the end of their residency they became tour guides for their parents and other visitors.

The Sherry Arnstein ladder of citizen participation (1969) was also mentioned (see pdf link below). It feels relevant because the MPSM Toolkit aims to share partnership tools that can help meaningful collaboration happen. When teachers and museum staff actively participate in partnership and work together over extended periods of time, they can develop relevant educational programmes based on what they have learnt about the needs, abilities and interests of children. They can realise the potential for cross-curricular learning using the museum’s collections and spaces. And children can be active participants too, by shaping the direction of their learning, using Potential Line of Development tools like the Discovery Tree used in the Tate Liverpool pilot.

https://www.participatorymethods.org/sites/participatorymethods.org/files/Arnstein%20ladder%201969.pdf

My Primary School is at the Museum is a model of school and museum collaboration which aims to give children the opportunity to spend lots of time immersed in a museum. In turn, this makes that museum a special place for them. I like the idea of having a special museum. A place to discover, learn and have fun with friends. A place to make connections between the things on the display and your own life and interests. A place to come back to and share. I followed up David Anderson’s story about the Swansea boy with Laura Luxton, the teacher who took part in the pilot. It was true, by the end of the project, “the children were strutting round like they owned the place!”

Dhikshana Pering, Young People’s Producer, London Borough of Culture 2020, opened the conference sharing her special connection with the Science Museum which began as a teenager on a sleepover there. Dhikshana closed the conference by urging everyone in museums to engage with museum’s learning potential.

Just as MPSM aims for children to learn from every area of the museum - the café, the stores, the shop, the conservation team - ideally a diverse range of people, from every area of museums, will be able to attend the next conference about museum learning. And I hope that everybody who works in museums will feel part of helping children feel welcome at their museum today, and in the future.

[1] Edinburgh open data – poverty and income inequality in Edinburgh

[2] http://www.artscouncil.org.uk/advice-and-guidance/browse-advice-and-guidance/great-art-and-culture-everyone.